In the vehicle development, part design has a huge influence in its mass, cost and performance. In addition, the part design can be helpful to solve some structure issues such as sheet metal cracks and boom noise, and at the same time achieving the project requirements in performance tests as crash, durability, noise and vibration (N&V) etc. Some design changes as adding reinforcements in the structure and increase the part thickness are largely used by the design engineers. On the other hand, these changes has a great potential for increase mass, cost and affect directly the fuel consumption, which are very sensitive factors for the OEM′s.
In order to achieve its target some options may be considered like the use of aluminum or premium material such as Advance High Strength Steel (AHSS) or Pre Hardened Steel (PHS), which has a high cost considering the common sheet metal used in the vehicle structures. The topology and PU Box front end modes tuning can drive to find out the best design, optimizing the mass, cost and keeping the performance without using premium material. This paper was prepared to show a case which was used the topology and FRF analyzes in order to re-design the pick-up box front panel which resulted in more than 2.0 kilograms reduction, cost saving around 40% on piece price and a reduction of 33 spot weld in the body shop area.